Tag Archives: Jews

As the problem of anti-Semitism rears its ugly head once more in British politics, I was moved to visit again the story of an amazing man whom I had the privilege of hearing tell his story at Yad Vashem. Jakub Weksler Waszkinel works there in the archives, but as a baby survived the Holocaust in Poland. This is his story, mainly in his own words.

‘I was born in Poland in 1943. I don’t know the exact date, but it was accepted that I celebrated it on the 25th March. However, my teacher seemed to think it should be the 28th February and asked me to speak to my mother and father. My father said that nobody knows – but how could that be? The fact was I didn’t look anything like my parents, which always made me feel uneasy. I had dark curly hair whereas my parent were Slavic in appearance and I would ask my father “why am I different?” His explanation was that a stork had dropped me down the chimney, they had cleaned me up but my hair remained black. Perplexed, I asked “why the chimney?” His reply was that it was winter and the doors and windows were closed.

I don’t remember anything specific about the war, but we lived near the station at Vilna (Hebrew for Vilnius, Lithuania) and the transports left from there for Poland. What I do remember is feeling very scared, full of fear, at the sound of planes – my mother said I was an anxious child and stuttered as a boy. At age five I encountered my first anti-Semitic event; I was returning home when two drunk men passed me and uttered the words ‘Jewish bastard’. They kept looking back and smiling, making fun of it. It panicked me, and when I got home I told my mother and asked her, ‘What is a Jew?’. She asked me who had called me that and I replied the neighbours. I repeated my question, but she just hugged and cried and said, “Remember, good smart people don’t talk that way and drunk people don’t even love their own children”. Unfortunately, this wasn’t an isolated incident, but mother always helped me calm down.

During bible classes I found out all about the Jews, presented as mostly horrible people because they had killed Christ. The bibles had paintings of stereotypical Jews and I began to be afraid of them. Even so I understood deep down that they had not murdered Jesus Christ. After all Jesus was a Jew and I thought this is your Jew – why mine – because he really loves me. Such a difference between school and home, where there was no mention of Jews.

Yet something still bothered me deep inside. My mother and father loved me very much, it was not just words but a sincere love. This love was demonstrated after I went to a party and heard an accordion being played. I was very excited and went home asking if I could have one, thinking it was a toy. However, we didn’t have any money, we were very poor. I whispered my wish and rubbed my father’s hands, calloused from hard work. Unbelievably they sold their cow to buy an accordion for me.

It was a strong, close relationship and I loved going to church and praying with them. At home I played make belief of being a priest and took a collection in matchsticks, before offering a blessing, ‘God bless you’. But my outward appearance still troubled me, I so desperately wanted to look like my father; and I believed that I did up until the age of ten, as they had shaved my head to prevent lice, but now I had hair again. I still pestered my mother for an explanation, and although in everything else she always told me the truth, I was met by silence and tears.

In exasperation I looked in the mirror and declared, “If I am a Jew see what I will do!” However, despite this assertion I didn’t want to be a Jew who had killed Jesus. Furthermore there were no Jews living around us, so I didn’t know what it was meant to be like – I just wanted to be an ordinary Polish child.

I didn’t encounter any problems at Middle school, I learnt the accordion and even bought a new one; I read poetry and forgot about being a priest. If I was asked what I wanted when I grew up I would answer that I wanted to get married and have children. Then in my last Religious Knowledge lesson the teacher priest asked us again and I heard the words coming out of my mouth, “I am going to be a priest”. This rather alarmed me as I despite going to church I felt I was a non-believer. Still, in the evening I told my parents that I was going to become a priest. My father’s reaction was puzzling. As a very religious man (I had seen him every night on his knees, praying) I thought that this would please him. Instead he asked me what I was going to do about all the young ladies and playing the accordion. He thought it was better that I become a doctor, but I reminded him that I didn’t like blood. Then what about an artist, he suggested, which was confusing as he had previously said the artistic life was bad. Basically do anything else rather than go to the seminary. My response was that, “I can go wherever I want. I can’t make promises to the wind.” So I went to the seminary to start my studies.

In October of that year I received a message that my father wanted to see me. I asked could it wait until the Christmas holidays, but no, he wanted to see me immediately. When he came I could tell he was very sad. After lunch we went to the chapel and he fell on his knees and started crying. I had never seen him like this before. When we came out I asked him why? Surely I wasn’t doing anything bad. A few days later I received a telephone call to say that my father had died.

This was a complete shock, and I felt responsible. At the funeral my mother reassured me that I hadn’t killed him, but that I could choose not to go back to the seminary. I did return and spoke to the Rector, “What shall I do?” He said I was in shock and to come back after a month, when I decided to remain there, “I won’t stop and I will be a good priest”.

It takes six years to become a Catholic Priest with a lot of studying the Bible. I had never had a bible at home and in it I saw the beautiful world of Judaism; the prophets were poetic and the New Testament confirmed that the Jews didn’t murder Jesus, symbiotic of my suffering, suffering of victim not perpetrator. When it came to make my vows as a deacon I needed to present my qualifications to become a priest and there were some doubts as to whether I had been baptised. The Jewish fear came back and I recalled the childhood name-calling. Maybe my parents may have known but they didn’t tell me, it was just rumour and gossip. So I had a conditional baptism and my Godmother, who is still alive wrote me a letter and came in 1966 when I was priested

Still the ugliness continued. My first year in the parish was good until someone reminded me of who I really was. The local train driver asked whether I knew what they were saying about me? Are you a Jew?

Then I went away to study at university – John Paul II was my ethics tutor. Nobody talked about the Holocaust in Poland, and parts of the country were still very anti-Semitic. On All Saints Day in 1968 I went to a cemetery where there was a Tomb of Fallen Soldiers. Nobody really went there as it was gloomy and dark. As I light a candle and was praying, I looked up to sky and noticed the dates 1941-1945 on the soldier’s helmet. I went back to the university to find out the history of those dates; the history of Poland during the war. It was the first time that I heard about the extermination of the Jews. It led me to think, was my mother raped? Maybe my mother isn’t my mother?

In 1975 she came to live with me, but she didn’t want to talk about the war, just said it was a bad time, but I needed to know and I gave my mother a book about the Jews. She started to cry and I asked her quite forcibly, “Am I a Jew?” Her response was, “Do I not love you?” I knew she loved me very much but I realised there was something there. It took three uneasy years before she felt able to tell me the truth.

Jakub’s two mothers – his birth mother, Batia, is on the right and his Polish mother, Emilia, on the left

I know the date and time of my second birth, the 23rd February 1978 at 7pm after dinner. She decided the time had come, that I must know. “You had beautiful parents who loved you very much, but they were Jews. I saved you from death. What their names were I don’t know”.

“What does that mean, that I am a Jew?” I asked. We cried a lot.

“You are important,” she said eventually, “Not your name. You had a very smart mother. I went into the Ghetto and spoke with her, but said I couldn’t take you because as a boy you had been circumcised, . Your birth mother’s response was that she knew I was a believer in Jesus, and he was a Jew, and if I saved her Jewish son, when he grows up he will be a priest!”… By then I had been 12 years a priest. She went on that in 1941 over a period of 3-4 days the Russians had murdered almost the entire Jewish population. The only ones that were left were those who were useful and my father had been a cobbler, a good shoemaker, a profession helpful to the Germans, which is why they were still there in 1943.

What was I to do with this information? I wrote to the Pope, John Paul II, the same man who had taught me at university, and asked for prayer. He responded, ‘Dear brother’, such wonderful words. The next fourteen years were very difficult as I began to find out more about my Jewish heritage. Then in 1992 a local nun came to visit Israel and when she looked at my native town immediately identified the names of my parents and was even able to find a photograph of them. I discovered my father’s name and that I had a brother, Samuel, and I apparently have my mother’s eyes.

The Jewish Catholic Priest

In July of that year I myself came to Israel. I had been in contact with my father’s brother and his family (who were very religious) and had written to them enclosing a picture of me in my collar. However, when I came down the steps of the plane there was no one in sight. Then I spotted my ‘grandfather’ with his cane. He recognised me because he said I walked like my father. Their first words were, “So you’re a priest, eh!” and wanted me to explain about the persecution of the Jews over the last 2000 years. My response was that I was not 2000 years old! How many times have I been baptised? It doesn’t matter. I asked to go with my uncle to the synagogue, after all Jesus went to the synagogue.

After my visit I wrote again to the Pope, I didn’t want any secrets, but I wanted to keep all my names on my identity cards, which wasn’t normal, but I received a letter with all my names and managed to change everything. l am a Polish citizen, but my nationality is Jewish [In Israel the Jewish status of a person is considered a matter of nationality]. I also asked that my Polish ‘parents’ be honoured as Righteous Among the Nations’ as they didn’t give back a Jewish child, “I wasn’t a suitcase to be handed back”. On the 1st December 1995 a plaque was unveiled with their names, and it turned out that the reason his mother was in the Ghetto was that they were thinking of adopting and had heard about a baby and wanted to save him.

Piotr and Emilia Waszkinel – Honoured as Righteous Gentiles

In 2009 I came to live here in Israel on a kibbutz in the Jordan valley. It was a religious kibbutz and at the beginning everyone was afraid that I was a missionary, but we grew to love each other and they didn’t want me to leave a year later when I decided to come to Jerusalem. I lived for a time in a Catholic house but now in a Jewish senior’s home and work here at Yad Vashem.

In 2012 I found my mother’s family and I am now a happy Jew. All I want now is to be a Jew, like Jesus – who wasn’t a priest or a Christian.

Shalom!’

Perhaps it’s good to remember that one’s identity is not always found in our outward expression of faith, but internally, in the heart and mind and soul which God knows better than anyone and loves us all just the same.

Our Lord Jesus Christ said:
The first commandment is this:
‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is the only Lord.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul, with all your mind,
and with all your strength.’
The second is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’
There is no other commandment greater than these.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.Summary of the Law from Common Worship

Jakub’s, or Yaakov as he prefers to be called, life was documented by Ronit Kertsner in the 2011 file ‘Torn’. He discovered his real parents were Yaakov and Batia Weksler and that he had been born in Swieciany, a shtetl near Vilna. He also learned that Batia had been an ardent Zionist and that she and her husband had an older son, Samuel. On April 4, 1943, Yaakov, Batia and three-year-old Samuel were put on a transport to Vilna. From there, Batia and Samuel were sent to Sobibor, and Yaakov to Stutthof. They all perished in the camps.

A sermon preached on Candlemas, honouring Holocaust Memorial Day 2018, based on Luke 2:22-40

May I speak and may you hear, through the Grace of our Lord, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen

A Jewish family… mother, father and precious new born baby son… entering the temple in Jerusalem, some 33 to 40 days after his birth, to fulfil a rite of passage required under the law of Moses; the purification of his mother with a simple offering, for those without wealth or status, of a pair of turtle doves or young pigeons.

Three people learning what it means to be a family, with little or no inkling of what life lies ahead of them, but filled with dreams and aspirations of what their son may grow up to be. Maybe for Joseph, a son to follow in the family tradition, to become a skilled carpenter working alongside him, and for Mary, a child who will grow up strong and healthy, perhaps achieving far greater things than his parents had by becoming a rabbi or priest.

We have to remember that this was taking place quite some time before three strangers from the East would turn up on their doorstep, with their unusual gifts, and a warning in a dream that would cause the family to flee across the border into Egypt. And yet the season of Epiphany draws to a close today with this story of Simeon revealing the poignant potential Jesus is destined to fulfil.

A potential that was to bring salvation for those who believe in him, both to Jews and Gentiles at the expense of those who would oppose him, , ‘I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly’. A potential that is offered to each and every one of us, to every child that is born. A potential that is to be nurtured and encouraged whatever shape or form it may take. A potential that can be torn away, stamped on and destroyed.

‘I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly’
John 10:10

Yesterday was Holocaust Memorial Day, a day set aside from our November Remembrance Day; when we remember those who fought and gave their lives not only in the 1st World War but also in the 2nd World War, where they stood up aside the evil tyranny of the Nazi regime. Holocaust Memorial Day is a special day to remember the six million Jews as well as other victims, who were murdered simply because of their religion, race, disability, or sexual orientation, bringing the total nearer to eleven million lives.

As a dry statistic, eleven million people is probably unimaginable, but imagine that you drove to the outskirts of London and suddenly the roads, houses and buildings were empty, deserted, every single place, right into the centre of the city. Everyone had disappeared, leaving behind most of their possessions, gone without a trace. Not a single living person remaining.

For the Jews living in Nazi occupied countries, these disappearances were happening in every city, town and village. The streets were falling silent, no one rushing about their daily business, no children playing in streets or shouting and laughing in parks and playgrounds. For among those six million almost a quarter of them were children, 1.5 million lives. Children who never got the chance to grow up and fulfil their potential or their dreams for the future.

Those six million people who were not born as victims, but who had their hopes and dreams brutally stripped away because of an ideology that condemned them to death just because they were Jewish.

Some of you will know that late last year I undertook a ten day seminar at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, where they not only educate people about the events and the peoples of the Holocaust or Shoah, as they prefer to call it, but also strive to preserve the memories and stories of the victims. Their photographic archive contains hundreds of photographs of Jewish people; people who smiled, danced, took part in sports and musical events, got married and enjoyed holidays and family occasions; with no awareness of the fate that awaited them; each now frozen in time for posterity, as the camera captured their everyday lives.

There are also photos of beloved children, dressed up and posed in their Sabbath best, no different I doubt to the snapshots we have, brought out years later to embarrass our offspring, except these children would face no future embarrassment.

This recognition of unfulfilled hope is echoed in another part of the site, where the Children’s Memorial has been created by hollowing out an under underground cavern, which has its own symbolism. It is entered by a descent that funnels you into a darkened room. In the gloom the images of several unnamed children stare out from photographs, as the sound of a mournful lament softly plays.

Then further down, feeling your way into the darkness, you enter what appears to be a room filled with stars. The effect is created by just five candles, which are replaced each day, reflected by mirrors to produce an infinity of tiny lights. In this twilight we listened to just a few of the names of some 1800 of the children, their ages and where they were from; a representation of stolen lives. It is very moving and I immediately thought of my own children

But it is the photographs that haunt me because it makes these children more tangible, and despite not knowing their names, they are no longer anonymous. In your service sheet is a slip of paper with some photographs on it, take a look at it now [see below].

Florika Liebmann, Unknown and Raphael Altmann

On the left is Florika Liebmann. She was born in 1934 in Szeged, Hungary to Bela and Szenka Liebmann. Bela was a Jewish photographer and businessman who ran an optical and photographic supply store, as well as doing photography in local theatres. During World War Two, he was conscripted into the Hungarian labour service. Szenka and Florika were deported, and in April 1945 were killed along with 38 other victims, in the village of Weissenbach by retreating SS soldiers.

On the right is Raphael Altmann. He was born in 1937 in Wilmersdorf, Germany to Kurt and Grietje Altmann. He was the oldest of four children, including his brothers Martijn and Fred. During the German occupation, the family was expelled to Zeist, in the Netherlands, from where they went into hiding in late 1942. When they could no longer stay together, the parents gave their two older children to a children’s house in Zeist. The house had an escape procedure, but in real time things went wrong. The headmistress was arrested with the children and sent to the Westerbork camp. The children were sent from this camp on to Auschwitz, where they perished on 26 March 1944. Kurt and Grietje, however, hid in four different places with their youngest son Fred and managed to survive. Raphael and Martijn never got to meet their sister Sophia, who was born in 1949

And the picture in the middle, what do you see there? A disabled child? A child with Downs Syndrome? Or a child who was lovingly dressed in his smart sailor’s suit, with polished, laced up boots and no doubt one of his daddy’s ties. I couldn’t find a name or a history for this young man, but he is known to have been victim of the Holocaust and he is representative of one of at least 5,000 disabled children who were murdered under the Nazi regime.

The Nazis falsely believed that some human beings were superior to others and they aimed to develop and preserve a pure Aryan master race. To do this they strove to select those they believed to be the most ‘perfect’ human beings and to deliberately remove from society those considered ‘undesirable’, including the disabled.

German midwives and doctors were ordered to report any child known to them who was born deaf or blind, with paralysis or with a neurological disorder such as Down’s Syndrome, and these children were systematically removed from institutions and families, although not without some reluctance on the parents’ part, from whom the final euthanasia was hidden.

Hitler and his regime justified this by endorsing opinions as expressed by Madison Grant, the author of The Passing of the Great Race, who said, “Mistaken regard for what are believed to be divine laws and a sentimental belief in the sanctity of human life, tend to prevent […] the elimination of defective infants … The laws of nature require the obliteration of the unfit, and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race.”

Translation: 60,000 Reichsmark is what this person suffering with a hereditary defect costs the People’s community during his lifetime. Fellow citizen that is your money too.

The Nazis took Darwin’s ideas of natural selection, in particular the idea of survival of the fittest in the animal kingdom, and applied them to the human world and society, however, the valuable of human life doesn’t just rely on its usefulness to others, but more importantly its capacity to love and be loved, and God places in each and every one of us an overriding potential for love.

Not just then, but nowadays, there is also a danger that we stifle this potential even before a child is born. A recent warning by the Church of England was that the future existence of people with Down’s Syndrome is ‘under question’ with the introduction of a new Non-Invasive Prenatal blood test to test for the condition, that the Church is concerned will lead to more terminations because of people’s fears and concerns about their ability to raise a disabled child and misconceptions about the condition itself.

I believe there are compelling and justifiable reasons why a pregnancy might be terminated, particularly if it is for the health and mental wellbeing of the woman or of the unborn child, but not for a sense of seeking ‘perfection’. Some woman reportedly, when they were told that the child they were carrying had Down’s Syndrome were presented with this information as ‘bad news’.

Actress and screenwriter, Sally Phillips, whose son Olly has Down’s, recently addressed this in the BBC documentary ‘A World without Down’s Syndrome’ revealed that when he was born, the doctor said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry’, the nurse on duty wept, and nothing positive was expressed. She discovered however, that far from being a tragedy their lives have been transformed by Olly, who is now twelve and attending a mainstream secondary school.

As she says, ‘Having Olly in my life has changed me and my family for the better. He has slightly worse impulse control which means he often says exactly what everyone is thinking but is too shy to say and he is also incredibly caring and gifted emotionally, really focussing on how others are feeling by noticing when people are upset when I don’t.’

And we do well to remember that discriminating against the disabled, disables us and diminishes us. There is no perfect human being, not me or you, nor anyone else apart from the person of Jesus, and no-one should be robbed of their potential for a full and meaningful life.

Simeon, when he looked at the baby that was in his arms, rejoiced that he was being given this opportunity to see for himself the person sent to bring about God’s plan of salvation for all, ‘the light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel’; and we know that Jesus was able to fulfil his potential by making the ultimate sacrifice of dying on the cross. It was part of God’s all-encompassing plan of his will being done on earth, but it was also Jesus’ choice and decision to go through with it, no one else’s.

Definitely ‘good news’, however, this still didn’t negate the sorrow that would be felt by Mary his mother. The sword that would pierce her soul, should also prick our own conscience so that we don’t forget those millions of innocent lives that ended so abruptly and so brutally. Children who never got the chance to grow up and fulfil their potential.

Holocaust Memorial Day is a time to remember the millions of people who were murdered, not just as an anonymous mass, but having looked into the eyes of the people in these photographs realising that they were people, just as we are. We don’t know everyone’s name but we can pause to reflect on their suffering and remember their ‘untold stories’. We can also make a clear promise to speak out against discrimination which judges some lives to be of less value than others today

In that way all may grow strong, be filled with wisdom and know that the favour of God rests on them.

In Shoah and GenocideI wrote about Professor Yuhuda Bauer’s insights into why the Shoah or Holocaust was unprecedented. However, for any genocide to occur there has to be a history behind it. Dr Jesper Svartvik* suggests that however painful it might be we have to recognise the part that Christian anti-Semitism had to play in it. So what was the history of this anti-Semitism?

He suggests that this can be explained as a sevenfold process:

SIBLINGS (Mark) In the beginning Judaism and Early Christianity had something in common. However, like most families where there are siblings, although they have a common origin that can be very different in character

RIVALRY (Marcion) For more than 100 years, Christians had been using the Old Testament as Christian Scripture, and even the most sacred documents of Christians referred to and relied heavily on, the Old Testament. The solution for Marcion, a second century theologian, was to completely reject the Old Testament and establish a canon that de-emphasized Christianity’s Old Testament and Jewish roots as much as possible, to move from the LAW to GRACE. Although his solution was rejected it did cause the early Church Father to do some re-evaluation, after all they were reading it through Christian spectacles

NECESSARY (Augustine) Despite speaking out against the Jews, he did not consider Judaism a problem, in fact he is quoted as saying that Jewish scripture was vital to the Christian faith, “If any adversary should say you have forged these prophecies, let the Jewish books be produced. They are our librarians.” But he did not consider the survival of Jews as necessary, after all they were the ones that had said ‘no’ to the Messiah and had therefore been relieved of God’s promises (replacement theology).

OPPOSITE (Luther) Martin Luther believed that there is no valid way of being a Christian that will make you Jewish, it could be agreed that they had the right texts but they were doing the wrong thing with them. At first Luther wanted to convert the Jews to Christianity, it had been done before because Christ himself was a Jew, but when this failed he said ‘Away with them’. As he grew older this attitude became more and more polemic, using the rudest and vilest scatological language, perhaps the politest example being ‘throw sow dung at him . . . and chase him away’. The effect though of this is that defendants in the Nuremberg trials after the war were able to quote from his treatise, On the Jews and Their Lies, written in 1543, as justification

Martin Luther

5. UNNECESSARY (Enlightenment). You would have thought that the Age of Enlightenment in the Eighteenth century, with its metaphorical image of light, would mean that these differences would disappear. However, when you become a minority, marked by your religious symbols and customs, these are seen as making you more religious, rather than part of the establishment . Therefore, religious attachment becomes a problem.
6. POISON (Nazi Germany) Christianity remained the dominant religion in Germany through the Nazi period. That Nazi ideology was able to come to the fore was due in part to the social and economic situation between 1918 and 1933. However, the Nazi’s didn’t even consider Jews as human and started talking about them as ‘rats’, a natural pest to be destroyed. Using a Christian perspective it was considered that there could be no salvation without the defeat of the Jews. The commandment to ‘love your neighbours’ was interpreted as ‘they live next door to us, but they are not my neighbours’.
7. SACRAMENTUM (Nostra Aetate) The Nosta Aetate is the Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions of the Second Vatican Council and repudiated anti-Semitism and the charge that Jews were collectively guilty for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. It said that we were all children of Abraham and that Christians and Jews were a blessing to the world. It also drew on Romans 11, the fact that ‘they are our brothers’.

This seems to bring the seven points in full circle – from Siblings to Sacramentum because Early Christianity and Judaism were so similar, but that Christianity had stepped out of the ashes of the 2nd Temple’s destruction. Christianity being the word that became flesh whilst Judaism was the flesh that became Word.

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Dr Jesper Svartvik since 2009 is the holder of Krister Stendahl’s professor of religious theology at the Center for Theology and Religious Studies at Lund University and the Swedish Theological Institute in Jerusalem. Between 2005 and 2009, he was chairman of the Swedish Committee against Anti-Semitism

Maybe it’s just me, but I still get really excited when I come across new words. When I was reading Betsy Kirk’s blog* a few days ago I noticed that she had used the word kvetching. At first I thought it was a typo, but curiosity got the better of me and a quick google came up with a definition and it turns out to be Hebrew slang.

The next challenge was to find out if it appeared in any passages in the bible. Again a trawl of bible translations came up with a verse in The Complete Jewish Bible

Do everything without kvetching or arguing– Philippians 2:14

Can’t you just imagine Paul pacing up and down as he dictated his response to the church at Philippi’s moans and groans, pausing to search for that exact work he wanted to use and coming up with kvetching! Trouble is it turns out it has its origins in 1960’s America from the Yiddish word kvteshn.

So biblical Jews did not kvetch – yet their ancestors, the Hebrews, certainly did lots of complaining and chronically so! The books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy are littered with their gripes – ‘Why have you brought us here to starve when back home we had cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic… I don’t think much of this flaky bread and there’s no meat in our diets…. (21 days later) What quail again!… I’m thirsty…. let’s go back… we’re all going to die…. etc… etc.’ No wonder Moses retired to his tent a lot – probably with his head under his pillow, mumbling something to Aaron to go and sort them out because he’d had enough!

The fact is it’s really easy to complain about things, it doesn’t take much effort and you get to blame everyone else for what is wrong. Maybe instead of kvetching then we should become kvetchants; there is a difference. Actually I think I just made that word up – try complainants instead. The latter means that some action is taken to rectify the problem.

I can sit and moan about being too hot or I could move into the shade; I can carp on about the fact that there’s nothing good to watch any of the TV channels or I could turn it off and read a book, I can whinge about young people hanging about on the streets or I could volunteer to help out at a youth centre.

Complainants can also act on behalf of other people, to complain about their situations; the lack of facilities for youth in our area, I could get in touch with the local council; the devastating effects of benefit cuts on older people, I could write to my Member of Parliament; the appalling lack of opportunities for every child to have an education, I could sign a petition to our world leaders.

Returning then to Paul’s reason’s as to why the Philippians shouldn’t be kvetchers:

Do everything without kvetching or arguing, so that you may be innocent and pure as God’s perfect children, who live in a world of corrupt and sinful people. You must shine among them like stars lighting up the sky, as you offer them the message of life.

As Christian’s we are called to shine as lights in the world – to uncover the dark places and flood them with sunshine and we can’t do that if we sometimes remain sitting in a darkened room waiting for someone to come and open the door and show us the way out, because someone else has obviously forgotten to feed the meter!

No doubt over the next few months there may be many times when I will be tempted to indulge in a bit of kvetching – ‘I’ll never get this essay finished in time…. how am I going to find 500 words to cut out of this presentation…. is theology meant to be this difficult to understand? In which case you have my express permission to gently, but firmly remind me to quit whinging, get on with it and trust that whatever happens, God will be right there in it with me…

*Betsy Kirk’s blog can be found at http://partofthemain.wordpress.com/